Friday Headlines

the weekly newsletter from Dr Ruth Weeks, Headmistress

Librarian's Top Picks

11 January 2019

Don't know what to read next? Stuck reading the same books over and over? Want a suggestion you can trust? These top picks will include books from all genres, new or old and
are hand-picked by the librarian to pique your interest. The best bit is they are all available in the school library.

Killing Eve: Codename Villanelle – by Luke Jennings – suitable for Year 9+
'Killing Eve: Codename Villanelle' is now a BBC series telling the story of Villanelle. A perfect assassin. A Russian orphan, saved from the death penalty for the brutal
revenge she took on her gangster father's killers. She has been ruthlessly trained. Given a new life. New names, new faces - whichever fits. Her paymasters call themselves The
Twelve. But she knows nothing of them. Konstantin is the man who saved her, and the one she answers to. She is without conscience, guilt or weakness. Eve Polastri is the woman
from MI5 who hunts her, until one error of judgment costs her everything. Then stopping a ruthless assassin becomes more than her job. It becomes personal.

Boy 87 – by Elle Fountain - suitable for all
'Boy 87' is about an ordinary boy who likes chess, maths and racing his best friend home from school. But one day, soldiers with guns come to his door - and he knows that
he is no longer safe. Shif is forced to leave his mother and little sister, and embark on a dangerous journey; a journey through imprisonment and escape, new lands and strange
voices, and a perilous crossing by land and sea. He will encounter cruelty and kindness; he will become separated from the people he loves. This is a gripping, uplifting tale
of one boy's struggle for survival; it echoes the story of young people all over the world today.

Sight – by Jessie Greengrass - suitable for Year 9+
'Sight' is the story of an unnamed narrator who recounts her progress to motherhood, while remembering the death of her own mother ten years before, and the childhood
summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother. Woven among these personal recollections are significant events in medical history: Wilhelm Röntgen's discovery of the
X-ray; Sigmund Freud's development of psychoanalysis and the work that he did with his daughter, Anna; and the origins of modern surgery and the anatomy of pregnant bodies.
Sight is a novel about being a parent and a child: what it is like to bring a person in to the world, and what it is to let one go. Exquisitely written and fiercely
intelligent, it is an incisive exploration of how we see others, and how we might know ourselves.

Reservoir 13 – by Jon McGregor – suitable for Year 9+
From the author of 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things'. It is Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the
heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their
usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.
The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.

Edgbaston High School is easy to reach by public transport. Alternatively, areas including Solihull, Walsall, Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, Streetly, Kinver, Stourbridge, Hagley and Halesowen are covered by the School's own minibus services or by private coaches organised by parents.